Kids Club Vol. 31: Cherries
KIDS CLUB
VOLUME 31
Welcome to the latest issue of our ChopChop Kids Club newsletter!
Juicy, red cherries are one of our favorite early summer treats (well, along with school letting out). You don’t need to do much to them, since they’re delicious just the way they are. But we have a couple of easy recipes anyway, just in case you find yourself with an abundance. Plus, we’ve got fun facts and sweet ideas to, well, put the cherry on top! (And we’re asking if you know where that expression comes from! Hint: It might involve whipped cream too.)
Happy summer!
INSIDE THIS ISSUE
- RECIPE
Cherry "Sherbet"
Cherry "Sherbet"
kitchen gear
- Measuring cup
- Food Processor (adult needed)
- Spatula
Ingredients
- 1 (12-ounce) bag frozen pitted cherries (2 cups)
- 1⁄2 cup plain yogurt
- 1⁄4 cup almond butter
Instructions
- Put the frozen cherries in the bowl of the food processor fitted with a steel blade and pulse until the cherries are well chopped.
- Add the yogurt and almond butter and process until smooth.
- Serve right away.
- KITCHEN SKILL
How to Pit a Cherry
If you don’t have a special cherry-pitting tool, you can use a chopstick to get the pits out! Balance a cherry, stem-side-up, on the mouth of an empty water bottle. If there’s still a stem, remove it. Hold a chopstick in the hand you write with and hold the fruit steady with the other hand, then push the chopstick straight down through the fruit. The pit should fall into the bottle (if it doesn’t, you can tug it out with your fingers).
- MAKE IT YOURSELF
Stuffed Cherry Tomatoes
Okay, we’re cheating with cherry tomatoes here. But it’s so much fun to make and eat fancy little stuffed foods! Start with around 20 cherry tomatoes and cut a thin slice off the top of each one. (You can set these aside to eat later.) Then use a small spoon or melon baller to scoop out the tomato pulp and discard it (or set it aside to eat later). As you hollow each tomato, turn it upside down and put it on a paper towel to drain while you prepare the rest. Spoon a little bit of tuna salad, egg salad, or herbed cream cheese or goat cheese into each tomato and serve.
The Bing cherry is the most widely grown type of cherry in the United States. It was named in 1875 for Ah Bing, a Chinese immigrant who oversaw a cherry orchard in Milwaukie, Oregon, for 35 years.
- PRACTICE GRATITUDE
Be Fruitful
Fruit is pretty incredible! Plants grow fruit to help nurture and spread their seeds—but fruit is delicious too. Take a bite of a fresh, ripe cherry (or another piece of fruit if that’s what you’ve got) and write down 5 words that describe the flavor.
How lucky are we to have fruit in our lives?
- BY THE NUMBERS
Cherries by the Numbers
- Al Gliniecki of Gulf Breeze, Florida, set a Guinness World Record by tying 39 cherry stems into knots in 3 minutes using his tongue.
- The heaviest cherry ever weighed 26.45 g (almost an ounce) and was grown in Italy in June 2020.
- The average cherry tree produces around 4,000 cherries in a single growing season. (That’s a lot of sherbet!)
Photo by Porapak Apichodilok from Pexels
5 Ways to Eat Cherries
- Top a rice cake with cottage cheese and sliced cherries.
- Snack on frozen cherries.
- Add fresh or frozen cherries to your next smoothie.
- Stir chopped cherries into a bowl of plain yogurt.
- Stuff pitted cherries with feta cheese.
Photo by Alesia Kozik from Pexels
- EDIBLE VOCABULARY
It's Cherry Pleasing
- “Pretty please with a cherry on top!” means please—and then a little extra. Where do you think that expression comes from?
- A drupe is another name for a stone fruit—the kind that has a single pit in the middle. Drupes include cherries and peaches. Can you think of any other fruits that might be drupes?
- What do you think the expression “Life is a bowl of cherries” means? Why?
- READ THIS
Cherries and Cherry Pits
Written and illustrated by Vera B. Williams
Picture Book, Ages 4–8
Bidemmi, a young artist, creates whole worlds from markers, paper, and her own imagination. The book has two different kinds of illustrations: Some show Bidemmi drawing, and others show the drawings that Bidemmi herself makes. All of Bidemmi’s characters are “eating cherries and spitting out the pits”—and it’s fun to guess when the cherries will show up in each story, because you know they will eventually. This one is fun to read by yourself, with someone else, or to someone else.
